Love is in the air at The Ara Project!
We’ve had a lot of fun recently playing match-maker for both our Scarlet and Great Green macaws. Both species are monogamous, or, as I like to say, mostly monogamous; like humans you occasionally get infidelity and divorce! While we can just take male and female birds and put them together to see if they’ll breed, research shows they’re more likely to be happy and healthy and therefore more successful parents, if we give them the opportunity to meet someone special.
While exploring our records in January, I discovered that many of our supposed pairs – birds living together in private breeding aviaries – had never produced young. Observations of our birds by vet Celine from France and biologist Mauricio from Mexico, showed that many of these so-called pairs were not engaging in any behaviour associated with bonded birds such as cuddling, preening each other, feeding each other and sitting and sleeping together. Perhaps some of our birds had simply fallen out of love and perhaps some of them were never in love!
So Mauricio, Celine and I came up with a grand plan. We would take every bird not ABSOLUTELY definitely in love with its partner and put them all in a large aviary together to see if a bit of mingling and flirting might yield new couples keen to produce some eggs! We took around 30 single Great Greens and put them together in large flight aviary. We did the same with around 30 Scarlets. This was obviously a situation that needed a great deal of observation; firstly just to check that no-one was being bullied and everyone was getting enough to eat and secondly, in order to identify couples. When we were certain two birds were a pair, we would then move them to a private breeding aviary (that’s a space they don’t share with anyone else, with some walls so they can find a quiet corner where they can’t see or be seen by other birds and, of course, a nest box.
It was a fascinating process and just like watching a reality tv show (well, it felt like it to us – no TV in the jungle!) What I learnt was that macaws have a complex society like us with different friendship groups and cliques and lots of flirting and teasing. There were males with several females, females with several males, possible pairs but with a third bird hanging around hopefully on the outskirts and birds who were with a different love interest every day. You can see strong friendships and homosexual pairs of both genders. And a few poor things who no one seems to want to be friends with at all.
Some birds fell in love quickly, some took time. In one case two birds flew to each other immediately and were inseparable from then on, suggesting we had inadvertently separated them in the past. In a few cases, birds that we thought weren’t bonded suddenly started behaving like they were, as if the sudden presence of the flock triggered that behaviour in them.
There is enough research around to tell us that we often underestimate our animal friends – there is certainly no doubt in my mind that parrots are emotionally intelligent and this experience has just cemented that for me. Macaws love, just like human beings do. They show affection physically by holding hands (well, feet), by ‘kissing,’ preening each other, talking to each other and, when they’re feeling really sexy, regurgitating into each other’s mouths. They care for each other and they teach each other. Like us, they need companionship for their mental health – one bird here who’s at least twenty years old and blind in one eye is a completely different bird now he’s found someone. He’s gone from spending his days siting in a corner, interacting with no-one to being alert, active and engaged with his surroundings.
Maybe you think I’m anthropomorphising but I don’t think so – why would human beings be the only living things capable of these feelings? And perhaps the most convincing proof of all – they can be absolute jerks to each other too, they’re often squabbling and bickering; I’ve seen some pretty heated domestics!
Anyway, as of mid-March we have many couples new and old happily installed in their private residences and smaller flocks of singles still under daily observation
Looks like our released birds are feeling pretty loved-up too. We’ve been releasing Scarlet Macaws here in Punta Islita since 2011 and in January and February of this year we started putting nest boxes up in large trees near our site for them. Macaws like to lay their eggs in large hollows in old trees, hollows formed naturally or by other animals. They do not construct their own nesting sites. Unfortunately in Central America so much primary forest has been cleared, there aren’t a lot of old trees around. So part of our conservation work is providing them with some options! We’ve spotted a few different pairs inspecting some of these nest boxes in the last few weeks.
We’ll see what happens in the next few months. The ultimate proof of our success will of course be some offspring but, whatever happens, I think we can at least say, we’ve got some happy parrots!
By Angharad
P.S. If you’re interested in emotional intelligence and cognition in animals I recommend Virginia Morell’s Animal Wise.
